DAY NINE

Okay.

I just swept my entire apartment in an effort to procrastinate writing this entry. That is so sad. And yet, so completely effective in motivating me to clean out this shoebox I call home. That's really all I got for you today. Well, that and this. Three things I learned while listening to NPR yesterday:

1. The Koran is meant to be read aloud. The actual translation of the word Koran is 'to recite.'

2. The correlation between violent video games and violence in the youth that play said video games is stronger than the correlation between second hand smoke and cancer. Okay, all together now: whoa shit!

3. I still kind of have a crush on Paul Rubens. He was interviewed by Terry Gross last night on Fresh Air and I found him delightfully quirky and charming. And nerdy. You know I can't resist the nerdy. How jealous of Dotty I am.

DAY EIGHT

Here’s what I did yesterday:

1. Woke up late.
2. Sat in bed for three hours and read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
3. Talked on the telephone for an hour and a half with my sister friend in Chicago.
4. Walked to the Co-op and bought almonds, tangerines, spinach, bread, and tuna fish.
5. Danced and sang in my room to a selection of upbeat songs by Modest Mouse.
6. Rode my bike to the river and bought one ball of Lamb’s Pride yarn, heather gray.
7. Rode my bike to the coffee shop on third and got all caffeinated and introspective.
8. Rode my bike to Target and bought two toothbrushes and a large box of Jr. Mints.
9. Rode home and called my brother, pit pat, to find out what I missed this weekend.
10. Got high and played three games of solitaire while eating almonds and Jr. Mints.
11. Sat in bed and knitted mittens while listening to This American Life on NPR.
12. Called RS; told him that I got my much needed space, told him that I love him.
13. Fell asleep with sweet music on repeat.

DAY SEVEN

There's this little thing I do, hee hee, it's kind of embarrassing, where I put everyone else's needs above my own and I make myself completely vulnerable because I don't draw boundaries and I lose sight of myself as I start to blend my life and my identity with the people around me until my confidence atrophies like a muscle, evaporates like a puddle, reduces to crumbs and then crumbs of crumbs.

So yeah.

I need to stop doing that.

DAY SIX

How perfect, snow.

DAY FIVE (DREAM FIVE)

Today is supposed to be the biggest shopping day of the year. I guess it is appropriate then, that I dreamt the Mall of America transformed into a spaceship and blasted off into the stratosphere. It was one cinder block departing from so much black top. And at the head of the ship, a child’s bedroom, androgynously decorated, complete with glass walls so occupants could witness, the swirling and spinning of the passing cosmos. It was for children suffering from leukemia, charity recipients from the Make A Wish Foundation. And on the window, a bold sponsor’s logo read, “McDonalds: Making Wishes Come True.”

DAY FOUR

Today is thanksgiving, and today is the first thanksgiving I will not spend with family. I love my family but they decided to spend the holidays in Chicago with extended relations and I guess I'm just not in a place where I feel like explaining my divorce and my depression to a bunch of folks who share only a quarter of my genetic information.

It made me cringe at first, having to tell my parents that I would not join them, but lucky me, my sense of obligation was plugged. I couldn't even feel so much as a pang of guilt. Especially when I remembered how they left me and my brother over Christmas break for a vacation in Cairo a few years back. I went to a friends house instead, like some orphaned child. I was the only one there who couldn't speak Korean.

DAY THREE

There’s a twenty-something boy who lives in the shoebox next door. This evening while in my bathroom, I heard him talking on the telephone, to what I can only assume to be his girlfriend. I pressed my hear ear against the wall. They were making plans for tomorrow night. He wanted to go somewhere to buy some CD and then he suggested they get a bottle of wine and make Sloppy Joe sandwiches at his place. I think she needed some convincing. I mean, I think she needed a hand climbing on the Sloppy Joe wagon, because he was making a huge case in favor of sloppy joes. Before he hung up, he told her that he loved her.

Isn’t it strange that you can share (or in my case, steal) an intimate moment with (from) someone else, and not even know their first name?

DAY TWO

Today I gave Learning Surveys to my math classes. They are essentially course evaluations. At the bottom of the page, there is a space reserved for additional comments. Here, one student wrote the following: Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!

Ah, it's the little things.

DAY ONE

Last night I watched a video documentary I made in February 2003. It was about a three day two night solo roadtrip I took to Lawrence KA. That trip marked the beginning of the end. A terrific funk had gripped me a few weeks before and I could not shake it, no matter how much I indulged in drink and drugs. I even tried to relieve my depression with a shopping. It was that bad.

So I called in sick and hit the road with my digital camcorder, a tripod and a clean shirt. I guess it may seem kind of narcissistic or egotistical to film yourself on the road, but it was more about the soundtrack and the camera angles than it was about me. At least that's what I thought when I was actually shooting. But now I watch it and realize it has everything to do with me and who I was at that point in time. It's so funny to watch all the ideas I have about my life now emerging from my brain back then, like tiny budding plants.

When I returned home, I buzzed something endless about this trip to my friends and family. The way I talked about it, you'd have thought I had just traveled to the moon. And in a way, I had.

I got the space ice cream to prove it.

THE CURE

You have no idea how often I visit this website and draw a really long 'duuuuuaaaaaahh' before I finally give up and do something else. It's not like I don't have things to share. I'm just so bloody fucking obsessive about these letters, with the arranging and the rearranging. (God, why do my feet feel so hot!?) To cure this stupidity I vow to write something every day for thirty-two days. No matter how dry and mundane it comes out sounding, I'm not going to edit. I mean Christ, I remember when I got my first journal. I was eight. I spent three days working on the table of contents before I realized I hadn't any content. By that time, I was completely exhausted with the idea of having a journal.